Articles Tagged withpayments

You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. Favors are often exchanged among friends and family. But what most people don’t know, or don’t want to know, is that questionable “favors” are also exchanged in professional and business relationships. Over the years, there have been reports that favors, or benefits, are too often exchanged between drug manufacturers and doctors and hospitals who prescribe medicines.

Recent studies have explored this relationship and compared data to see if drug makers are, effectively, paying doctors to prescribe their medications.

In 2010, the Affordable Care Act included a section called the Physician Payment Sunshine Act. This Act requires drug and device manufacturers to report any and all payments made to physicians and hospitals. Since 2013, 40.74 million records have been published and $24.92 billion dollars have been given to doctors and hospitals from drug and device manufacturers. The Sunshine Act has been successful at exposing these payments.

I have to say, there are times I just don’t want to hear any more alarming news. But recently I stumbled upon a disturbing database of payments made by drug and medical device manufacturers to physicians. It can be horrifying to imagine that your doctor or surgeon is getting huge amounts of money from drug companies or device makers, for any reason. Now imagine that the payments were hundreds of thousands of dollars, or millions. It just doesn’t pass the smell test. Think about it: if a surgeon gets $250,000.00 per year from a medical device manufacturer, do you think the surgeon is likely going to “choose” to implant devices made by the fee-paying medical device manufacturer?

ProPublica is the nonprofit organization who maintains the database. Recently nonprofit organization updated its database of doctors across the country who were paid by medical device manufacturers or drug makers in 2015. ProPublica also compiled statistics on the amount of money drug companies spent promoting certain prescription medications and medical devices. The numbers are staggering. Let’s take a look at a few of the prescription medications on ProPublica’s list that I’ve written about on this site: